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Microsoft to Shut Encarta As Free Sites.

Microsoft Corp. said it plans to shut down its Encarta encyclopedia, in the wake of pressures that include the growth of Wikipedia and other free reference sites.

Adobe made partnership with Facebook to create Flash developer tools.

Adobe has partnered with one of the most popular social networking Web sites, Facebook, to give developers a new set of tools to create applications.

The applications will use Adobe’s Flash platform and the new ActionScript 3 Client Library for Facebook the two companies developed together. The client library is a free open source programming language that supports Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) including Facebook Connect.

Adrian Ludwig, Adobe’s group manager for platforms, told Macworld that the companies will release the library and then gather feedback from developers. The libraries will be updated, adding functionality based on that feedback, allowing developers to make better applications.

The number and types of developers using Flash is increasing all the time. Some of the developers are focused on Flash, while others are coming from more traditional segments of the market.

“We are seeing that it’s becoming quite easy for traditional developers to start using Flash,” said Ludwig. “That’s quite a change from where it was five to eight years ago when Flash was focused on animation.”

Adobe said that Flash Player 9 has 98 percent penetration, meaning that 98 percent of all Internet connected computers have the application installed. The company did a study two months after the release of Flash Player 10 and found 55 percent penetration. While not released yet, Ludwig said he expects the latest adoption rate for Flash Player 10 to top 80 percent.

Those numbers give Flash Player 10 the fastest adoption rate of any version of Flash Player, according to Adobe.

Writing Facebook applications in Flash is not new. In fact, 12 of top 20 apps on Facebook use Flash. However, the new tools should make it easier for developers in the future.

Intel Gives ‘Nehalem’ Server Launch Enormous Weight.

Intel launched a version of its “Nehalem” processor architecture for servers on Monday, which it will market under the “Xeon 5500″ name. All told, however, fifteen derivatives of the chip were announced.

According to Patrick Gelsinger, the senior vice president and general manager overseeing the Digital Enteprrise Group at Intel, the introduction of the Xeon 5500 is the most important introduction of a server processor in over a decade, he said at a launch of the Xeon 5500 at Intel’s headquarters here.

“We see this as significant and as transformational as the Pentium Pro was in its day,” Gelsinger said. Gelsinger also referred to the Xeon 5500 as “the greatest leap in history of performance of server processors.”

Intel has shipped hundreds of thousands of the new Intel Xeon 5500s since December, when it first began production. Although Intel said that more than 230 unique systems are shipping with the new chip inside, a collection of end-user customers gathered on stage, from Dreamworks to Humana, almost all said that they were still in testing or development.

The Nehalem architecture was already launched as part of the Core i7 product for PCs. Intel also announced the 5520 chipset and the Intel 85299 10-Gbit Ethernet controller, as well as the Intel Data Center Manager software. The latter product overlaps some of the services that OEMs themselves provide; for those that do not, however, the service allows an IT manager to cap the amount of energy a datacenter consumes. The software translates that control into throttling individual microprocessor cores.

IBM leads techs in seeking open “cloud” computing.

IBM led dozens of tech companies in calling on Monday for open standards to promote “cloud” computing, a fledgling technology the industry hopes will drive growth over the coming decade.

But rival Microsoft Corp dismissed the effort, accusing International Business Machines Corp of seeking to exert control of the field, while cloud-computing pioneers Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc, Salesforce.com Inc were conspicuously absent from a list of companies endorsing it.

“Cloud computing” — one of the hottest buzz words in Silicon Valley — refers to a variety of ways in which technology companies offer services over the Web from remote data centers, seemingly from the cloud of the Internet.

The IBM-led resolution — dubbed the Open Cloud Manifesto — calls for making cloud computing products compatible with each other to boost their appeal to businesses.

Companies are generally reluctant to adopt proprietary new technologies where they feel locked into one provider out of concern they won’t have the option to switch to another vendor if things go sour or better options arise.

“It’s not that everything is going to be perfectly compatible, but it is going to be somewhat similar so that you can move from one vendor to another. It gives businesses the comfort level they need to buy,” said Stephen O’Grady, an analyst with technology research firm RedMonk.

The tech industry is under pressure to encourage businesses to adopt cloud computing technologies, which could help them save money by outsourcing part of their IT operations to mega-data centers that can achieve huge economies of scale.

Besides issues of compatibility, companies worry about the security implications of storing information at remote computer centers and moving it across the Internet.

Tech researcher Gartner Inc estimates that the market for cloud-based business software, computing services and storage from companies including Salesforce.com Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft and IBM will total about $10 billion this year. That’s just a fraction of the $223 billion that Gartner is projecting for the business software market alone.

IBM sees the manifesto as a first step toward establishing specific standards so customers can confidently switch between cloud-computing providers, said Irving Wladawski-Berger, chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology.

O’Grady of RedMonk expects that some of the standards would focus on security areas such as data protection and identity verification, alleviating some of the biggest concerns.

Backers of the manifesto include AT&T Corp., Cisco Systems Inc, EMC Corp, Novell Inc, Red Hat Inc, Sun Microsystems Inc and VMware Inc.

A spokeswoman for Amazon said her company was reviewing the document. A Google spokesman said his company decided not to support the manifesto, but did not give a reason. A spokesman for Salesforce.com could not be reached for comment.

But Microsoft vocally criticized IBM’s role in drafting the manifesto, saying Microsoft was only asked to sign on at the last minute.

“It appears to us that one company or just a few companies would prefer to control the evolution of cloud computing, as opposed to reaching a consensus across key stakeholders (including cloud users) through an ‘open’ process,” Microsoft executive Steven Martin said in a blog posting.

Wladawski-Berger at IBM said his company was one of the key leaders of the project, but that other organizers included Google. He added that he was surprised Google decided not to sign the document.

He said that he believed Microsoft and IBM would eventually work out their differences over the emerging standards.

“I’ve been around for a long time. There are always food fights at the beginning,” he said. “This will get worked out.”

Disney to launch ad-supported channels on YouTube.

Walt Disney Co and Google Inc’s YouTube said on Monday they have reached a pact to offer consumers advertising supported premium short-form content on the hugely popular video-sharing site from next month.

The deal will see videos from sports network ESPN from April and the Disney/ABC Television networks such as ABC Entertainment and SoapNet become available on YouTube from May. Disney Media Networks will have the option to sell its own advertising inventory within those channels.

The companies said that as part of the agreement, the ESPN Video Player will be integrated into ESPN’s channel on YouTube and the sports network will also produce additional short-form content through YouTube’s player.

ESPN content that is available on the ESPN channel and player will not contain long-form content from its linear networks — such as cable television.

Disney has resisted making its original content widely available for free through third party distributors on the Web before now. But in recent weeks there have been reports of plans for the media company to partner not just with YouTube but also with Hulu, the online video service owned by News Corp and NBC Universal.

“This deal provides us with the opportunity to reach a broader online audience, to experiment with different monetization models and to extend the reach of our advertisers within branded environments that they most desire,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks.

The deal will be a major boost for YouTube, which has struggled to convince advertisers to make a major financial commitment with so many of the videos dominated by clips uploaded by users.

The video service is easily the most popular online video service in the United States, according to data from Web audience measurement firm comScore, with more than 99 million unique viewers in February.

But despite that popularity it has been under pressure from Google investors keen to see the audience numbers converted to dollars. YouTube has yet to make a significant contribution to Google’s bottom-line.

One sign that YouTube executives are prepared to start making compromises is that it has agreed for Disney to test pre-roll advertising on short-form content. YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have in the past said that pre-roll advertising would harm the popularity of its service as its videos are short-form.

Barron’s says Infosys shares are attractive.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Shares of Infosys Technologies Ltd (INFY.BO) are a cheap investment in a bright future, Barron’s reported on Sunday.

The Indian information technology company is holding up well in the global downturn and is positioning itself nicely for a recovery, Barron’s said.

Barron’s also said Infosys shares, which are trading at a discount to the average of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX, are attractively priced and that the company is unlikely to eliminate its dividend.

OVERVIEW- INFOSYS

Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) was started in 1981 by seven people with US$ 250. Today, we are a global leader in the “next generation” of IT and consulting with revenues of over US$ 4 billion.

Infosys defines, designs and delivers technology-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. Infosys also provides a complete range of services by leveraging our domain and business expertise and strategic alliances with leading technology providers.

Infosys’ offerings span business and technology consulting, application services, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering, independent testing and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing

Infosys pioneered the Global Delivery Model (GDM), which emerged as a disruptive force in the industry leading to the rise of offshore outsourcing. The GDM is based on the principle of taking work to the location where the best talent is available, where it makes the best economic sense, with the least amount of acceptable risk.

Infosys has a global footprint with over 50 offices and development centers in India, China, Australia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the UK, Canada and Japan. Infosys has over 103,000 employees.

Infosys takes pride in building strategic long-term client relationships. Over 97% of our revenues come from existing customers.

Chinese hack into computers in India.

A Chinese cyber spy network has hacked into nearly 1,300 computers across 103 countries, with India being the fourth-worst victim, and the infected machines include those at Indian embassies and other government organisations.

About one-third of the hacked computers include those possibly containing classified data and installed in embassies, government offices and many high-profile private organisations, Canada-based internet research firm Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) found in an investigation.

The investigation was focused on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan community, IWM said, adding that the research revealed at least 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries. Taiwan was targeted most, followed by the US, Vietnam and India, IWM said in a report.

About 30 per cent of the computers hacked into by the network, named GhostNet by IWM, can be considered high-value diplomatic, political, economic and military targets.

The list of affected computers include those at the Indian embassies in the US, Belgium, Germany, and Italy; the High Commissions of India in Cyprus and the UK; the National Informatics Centre, Software and Technology Parks of India, Office of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile in India.

YouTube adds Upload Progress Bar, Simpler HD Parameters, more.

YouTube, in their latest blog post, has made a list of the new updates made to the extremely popular video
sharing site.

The new features, or updated features in the new release are as follows:

* Upload Progress Bar: A new Flash uploader is up for all supported browsers and it comes with a long-awaited (and much-requested) feature: an upload progress bar that lets you know the status of your upload. Our next step will be providing the estimated video processing time for your upload.

* Simpler HD Parameter: We want to give you more control over how your video looks, including the option of it being eye-blazingly clear (HD), so we’ve now added an official URL parameter (hd=1) for sharing HD links.

* Tweet Tweet: Everyone’s on The Twitter these days, so we’ve added a “share to Twitter” button under the Share options so you can easily send a video into your Twitterstream. (Feel free to change the prefilled text, if you like.) This was a big internal request, but we know many of you asked for it, too. We don’t currently shorten the Video URL automagically but hope to get to it down the road.

* Do You EDU? Educational Hub Launches: Using YouTube as a vehicle to democratize learning is one of the coolest, unintended outcomes of its existence. YouTube EDU is a volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. We’ll feature some of these videos on the home page on Friday and elaborate further in a separate post on that day.

* Mobile Improvements: We’re working hard to develop apps and a mobile Web site that enables the best possible video experience on as many devices as possible — we recognize that mobile is a key component of how people will consume video in the future. So in addition to launching a new mobile landing page, we’ve cleaned up the upload flow from phone-to-YouTube so this should be a lot more smooth and intuitive now. More on this in a post this weekend.

*Easier to Log In With Google Credentials: If you have your YouTube account associated with your Google account, you no longer have to go to a separate page to log in to YouTube with your Google account information. It’s all in one place at sign-in.

* Neater Watch Pages: Yes, sometimes YouTube can feel a bit cluttered, so last night we took some time to “clean up” the presentation on the watch page. Generally, we’ve heard from you that the action area on this page has been a bit confusing and should be made simpler. So we’re streamlining the space beneath the player to better use the available real estate and to present all of the actions more consistently. Some changes you’ll notice: a) the action links are a bit smaller and more condensed; b) we’ve eliminated the tabs for Comments, Statistics & Data and instead made all of these available in expandable sections (which you can collapse/uncollapse using the little arrow), making it easy to expose or hide information in a consistent way. As a side note, we’ve begun work on a broader watch page redesign to incorporate all the things we’ve learned since our last major change. Expect to see some ideas and concept sketches on the blog once we’re further along.

* A Little Help for Your Friends: The process of connecting with your friends on YouTube will see some bigger improvements soon, but in the meantime, we’ve added the ability for you to send an invite and personalized note to a username or email address. There’s also an instant friend link to instant message if that’s your preferred mode of communication — go to: [ link ]

* New Names for Sponsored, Promoted and Featured Videos: We’ve done a bit of spring cleaning with regards to some of the nomenclature on the site. This post from yesterday tells the story.

Related Post: now-youtube-is-tweet-on-twitter

Video games ‘can improve vision’

Playing action video games can boost an aspect of adult vision previously thought to be fixed, a US study shows.

Researchers found playing the games improved the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background.

“Contrast sensitivity” is important in situations such as driving at night, or in conditions of poor visibility.

The Nature Neuroscience study raises the possibility of using a video game training regime to improve vision.

Contrast sensitivity is often one of the first aspects of vision to be affected by aging.

It can also be affected by conditions such as amblyopia, known as “lazy eye”.

Improving contrast sensitivity usually requires physical changes in eye optics, through eye surgery, glasses or contact lenses.

A team from the University of Rochester studied expert video game players and found that they had better contrast sensitivity when compared with players who played non-action video games.

These results were not because people with better contrast sensitivity were more likely to be action video game players – giving non-video game players intensive daily practice in video game playing improved this group’s performance on tests of contrast sensitivity.

Crucially, the improvements in this study were sustained for months or even years in some cases, suggesting that time spent in front of a computer screen is not necessarily harmful for vision, as has sometimes been suggested.

Unpredictable events

Lead researcher Dr Daphne Bavelier said it was likely that several aspects of playing video games combined to produce the beneficial effect.

The games immersed players in an environment where they had to be constantly ready to react to unpredictable events, and where visual information had to be responded to instantly in very precise physical ways.

In addition, the mere fact that the games were stimulating and rewarding should not be overlooked.

Dr Bavelier hopes to make use of the discovery to develop new ways to treat amblyopia.

The hope is that by using video games researchers can encourage the two eyes to work together, and restore the stereo vision which is lacking in people with a lazy eye.

Professor Gary Rubin, of the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, said he was surprised by the findings.

He said other work had shown that it was possible to train people to improve some aspects of their vision – for instance, to widen the visual field.

But he said: “Contrast sensitivity is a very basic visual function, and usually they are more difficult to alter in adulthood.

“This is a small study, showing a small effect, but it was carefully done, and merits further investigation.”

John Sloper, a consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said other researchers were also examining the potential for using video games to treat amblyopia.

He said: “There is some evidence that the visual system can learn.”

What is HTML? Hyper Text Markup Language

What is HTML?

A guide to learning html for beginners.

HTML are initials that stand for Hyper Text Markup Language

• Hyper is the opposite of linear. It used to be that computer programs had to move in a linear fashion. This before this, this before this, and so on. HTML does not hold to that pattern and allows the person viewing the World Wide Web page to go anywhere, any time they want.
• Text is what you will use. English letters, just like you use everyday..
• Markup is what you will do. You will write in plain English and then mark up what you wrote.
• Language. Some may argue that technically html is a code, but you write html in plain, everyday English language.

HTML is the code behind your webpage and is what your browser looks for to display a webpage, the way the webdesigner intended it to look, and is a series of tags <tags> that tells the browser where to display what. It is really a series of simple commands that you give to the browser, just like telling your dog to sit, and because it is in plain English it is easy to learn. For example, if you want your text to show in a bold type, you command it <bold> to be bold text </bold>, it really is that easy.

Keep this in mind: HTML documents must be text only.
When you save a HTML document, you must save only the text, nothing else. HTML browsers can only read text. Look at your keyboard. See the letters and numbers and little signs like % and @ and *? There are 128 in all (read upper- and lowercase letters as two). That’s text. That’s what the browser reads. It simply doesn’t understand anything else.

Remember that if you are using Notepad, Wordpad, or Simple Text, the document will be saved as text with no extra prompting. Just choose SAVE.

If you are going to start learning to write HTML, it is a good idea to learn to look at other authors’ HTML pages. The actual html potion of the page behind the pretty page you see in front of you now.

Looking at another’s html code helps you learn how things are done and you can copy the style of pages that you like. Please do not just steal and copy the pages, but no one will be upset if you make the style in much the same way. For example, if you were going to build a house, you would look around to see what styles you like before deciding on your own design. Same thing here, look around the web and see what styles you like and apply them to your own ideas.

Here’s how you look at an HTML document (known as the “source code”)

• When you find a page you like, click on VIEW at the top of the screen.
• Choose SOURCE from the menu.
• The HTML document will appear on the screen.

Try it with this page. Click on VIEW and then choose the SOURCE.
It will look like mumbo jumbo right now, but soon it’ll be readable and you’ll be able to find exactly how a certain HTML presentation was performed.

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